“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.” – 4/5 stars!

Attention! This book contains: Mormonism, rolled up sleeves, birth certificates, roommates, ballet slippers, heads in toilets, car accidents, mountains, newborn babies, exams, herbs, baby deliveries, a good education and a lot of physical abuse.

Where do I even start with this book? This was a very hard book to rate. To be honest I’m still not sure about how I feel after reading it, but I’m still going to share some of my thoughts anyways.

First of all, I think she is clearly a very strong, inspiring person. I honestly can’t even imagine what it was like to be on her shoes not only growing up, but also knowing that her family situation didn’t change even after she left the house. I’m very impressed that she was able to go to college and get really good grades in most subjects! The fact that she got so far with her education knowing that she never went to school, didn’t have her family’s support and didn’t know a lot of simple things that for most of us is common knowledge, sounds so crazy to me! The sad part is that I think she probably still doesn’t know a lot of simple/common things to this day, but my hope is that she is keeping her efforts to learn new things and improve herself. I’m very glad she decided to write a book about her life.

At some points in the book I got really frustrated. I honestly felt her pain and I felt tired for her. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to have to deal with such a dysfunctional, irrational family that controls your life and brainwashes you by using religion as an excuse. My family is not perfect by far, but this was another level of crazy. I hated her brother. Like, true hatred. Well, to be fair I also didn’t like her dad, but at least he didn’t abuse her and her siblings physically like her brother did. But what bothered me the most was how she kept giving excuses for her brother’s behaviour and she tried to laugh it off in public so that people wouldn’t understand what was really going on. Not only that, but she kept on “accepting” the abuse and being controlled by her dad and brother. I just hated how in one second they were good to her and then the next second treated her like garbage and called her names. Well, don’t even get me started on name calling… what her brother called her really disgusted me. Especially when she found out that one of the words had a very powerful meaning. And I know they probably have mental issues and I know she didn’t know/couldn’t do any better at that time, but it still broke my heart and I wish I was there to defend her when nobody else did. Which is a great segway to introduce the other amazing family member: the mom. I have to admit, the mother was one of the family members that confused me the most. You would think that a mother would defend her child no matter what… but she just watched and did nothing. Sometimes she was on Tara’s side and the next minute she was on her husband’s side, agreeing with whatever he said about Tara. I just… ugh, I was so frustrated that everyone around her was such a bad influence. Fortunately for her, she had a great brother that helped her and encouraged her to study and tell her that there was a world outside of the mountains. Tyler was the ultimate MVP – and probably the only other sane person in that family…. just saying.

I also wonder how her family reacted when she told them she decided to write a book about her life. Because she basically put her family members – especially her dad and brother – on blast, and I would love to know what happened next and what were their thoughts since the book became so popular.

One thing I like to add is that I wish she narrated her own book. Don’t get me wrong, the narrator did a great job telling her story, but since this is such a personal book I think she should have narrated her herself. I know it would be even more powerful, without a doubt.

I completely understand why this book won a Goodreads award and I highly recommend it too. Damn… there really are some effed up families out there. Trigger warning for physical and mental abuse!

xoxo, Neide

“I’ve got a hot date tonight – I see the excitement flash across Nona’s face – with a book.” – 3.5/5 stars!

Attention! This book contains: crosswords, ice cream carts, self-help books, empty passports, borrowed hoodies, boat rides, difficult hikes, bungee jump rides and a lot of deflecting.

I have to admit, the cover did it again. A cover made me buy a book. I know, I know… I shouldn’t buy a book only by it’s cover. But I did it and I’m not ashamed of that. The cover is gorgeous, colorful and screams summer read! Fortunately for me, that’s exactly what I got: a cutesy YA summer read! 

And even though I liked the book, there were some things that I wasn’t a fan of. I think overall the pacing was great, but for me the ending felt rushed. I just wish there was a better way to wrap up the story, because it felt very unrealistic the way things turned out. But I think my main problem with this book was the main character, Rachel, and her behaviour dealing with the boys. In case you don’t know, there is a pretty solid love triangle in this book – that for a second made me wonder who she would end up with, and I liked that – and what really bothered me was how she decided to date both guys AT THE SAME TIME. I mean… come on girl. She was very childish and immature at some points, and her behaviour made her a not likeable character for me. The thing that makes me kind of conflicted is that other than those characteristics, I also saw myself in her in other ways. For example, I loved the Marie Kondo references throughout the book! “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” is one of my all time favorite self-development books and it was fun to see it being referenced in some chapters. She is an organizational freak like me, and I loved how she said that when she took tests she didn’t even think about possibly failing. She always did her best and that was her daily routine. Period.

But those weren’t the only things that made me relate to Rachel. What I really liked about this book is that even though it’s a summery, light read, it actually sends a powerful message. I was a “no” person for most of my life, and the last few years I’ve been trying to push my boundaries and trying new things because I felt like I wasn’t actually living. So, just like her, I started to say “yes” to opportunities and things that scared me. And to be completely honest, saying “yes” allowed me to have amazing experiences and memories that I will never forget nor regret. And well, this all sounds amazing and inspiring and all that, but the truth is that in reality there are some situations when you have to say “no”. And that was what really spoke to me in this book. I also tried to be a “yes” person just like Rachel, but I had to learn by myself that always saying “yes” is not always a good idea. You need to use your common sense and discover by yourself a healthy balance between what could be a “yes” and what is definitely a “no”. So yeah, I really appreciate the message of this book.

Like I said a million times by now: it’s a cute summer read with a good message. So if you’re looking for something to read at the beach – or indoors, because COVID-19 is still a thing -, this is a good option.

xoxo, Neide

“Beauty loses its meaning when you’re surrounded by too much of it.” – 3.5/5 stars!

Attention! This book contains: waterfalls, interrogation rooms, moving walls, black dresses, showcases, Poe’s poems, pregnancy tests, ceramics, carousels, sad dragons, perfectly peeled oranges, tattooed butterfly wings and beautiful gardens.

This was probably one of my most anticipated reads for this year… and I have to say I’m disappointed. When I heard about this book for the first time, I knew I had to pick it up. A killer who kidnaps girls and tattoos their backs with butterfly wings? My first thought was “I need this book ASAP”. 

Maybe I had high expectations. I already had a clear idea in my mind of how this book would be before I read it and I was super excited to finally pick it up, and then I got disappointed with the outcome. 

I think the biggest problem for me was the book format. I honestly don’t think the writing is bad, but the way the author decided to approach the story ruined it for me. Well, in case you haven’t read it yet, the entire book is divided ONLY into three parts. There are no chapters to finish “scenes”, only small breaks that have no reason to exist given the context. The story just keeps going and going, and if you want to put the book down you will have to stop at the end of a random paragraph or small break – like I had to do several times – and I didn’t like that. But that’s not even my main issue with this book. It’s written in a very confusing way! It’s hard to explain but even though the story is told without breaks, the girl who’s being questioned keeps going back and forth with the timeline of events. So as you can probably imagine, sometimes the story gets difficult to follow. I also think the story would be more interesting if it followed the girl during her time at the Garden instead of a police interrogation – but what do I know? I’m not a writer.

And then I thought, “okay, but the ending is going to be good and then I’ll rate this higher”. Wrong again. The ending did not impress me. The story felt incomplete and I wish some things would be better explained and developed. It was only a “meh” ending in my opinion.

But I’m happy to say that not everything was bad. Like I said before, I really liked the concept and story overall. The story was very creative and creepy, and I loved the smallest details. For example, one thing I really liked was how the author mentions what species is tattooed on each girl. That gave me the opportunity to google each species and get a clear picture of what was described of their backs. The book is very detailed and I liked how the environment was described. I also liked how raw and honest the main character was. She suffered a lot in her life and she was very honest but couldn’t be sweet or pretend that things would be alright. She accepted the world she lived in and she was very aware of her reality. I know probably it’s an unpopular opinion, but I actually liked her. I also loved how the girls would be together in their rooms and chat, and how everyone had different hobbies to deal with their daily lives. Every single girl had her own personality and likes and even though they were all very different from each other, their circumstances brought them together and made them a true family.

What makes me sad is that this book had so much potential to be incredible. The story itself is actually really good and creative, I just wish the approach was different. I know that this book is part of a series and I’m tempted to pick the next book up just to see how it goes, but I’m not sure for now. Ergh, I really wanted to love this one!

xoxo, Neide

“So, if you’re asking me if it’s possible for you to make errors in judgement, the answer is yes. You make errors all the time… as does every other human being who has ever lived. Error is an intrinsic part of the human condition – and it is something I deeply love about humankind.” – 5/5 stars!

Attention! This book contains: mass gleanings, vaults, revivals, midnight cravings, broadcasts, islands, blind spots, bunkers, diamonds, automatic cars, earpieces, ex nimbo agents, rockets, deleted iterations and sweet reencounters.

Neal Shusterman sure knows how to end a series… wow, what a ride! I honestly can’t believe no one made a movie out of this series yet! Seriously, why is everyone sleeping on this?

Looking back and comparing the first book to last book, this one is very different. In the first book you are introduced to the two main characters and even though it’s a dystopia, the entire book still has a very normal/human vibe – sorry, I don’t know how else to describe it -, and in this one the science-fiction aspect is very strong and there are a lot of technologic and A.I. elements to it. I honestly would have never guessed how this series would develop because the story was always changing direction and was overall very unpredictable. For me that was a good thing because it kept me interested and wondering on what would happen next.

I confess I was really curious to know how the author would follow up the second book’s cliffhanger – because boy on boy… that ending was intense to say the least – and I was not disappointed with the outcome. The story progressed in a different direction that I expected and the two main characters were kind of left in the background for this one, but I didn’t mind that.

In contrast with the first book and second book where there were passages from the scythes diaries and thoughts from the thunderhead respectively, in this one we get passages from thunderhead’s iterations – can’t talk too much about that too because I don’t want to spoil anything! But it was an amazing and genius addition to the book.

And that ending… wow. For those who read the book will understand when I say: I can’t believe he waited all that time… the ending was beautiful.

The funniest thing for me is that I’m not a science-fiction fan, but I can say without a doubt that this was one of the best series I’ve read not only this year, but ever. Highly recommend it if you never picked it up, it’s completely worth it!

xoxo, Neide

“If I had to choose my favorite, you’d be mine.” – 4.25/5 stars!

Attention! This book contains: amusement parks, tiger plushies, small bikinis, revenge lyrics, fiddles, gems, ball caps, red carpets, award ceremonies, good looking jeans and barefoot dances.

It doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes I turn on my Spotify, I play my favorite country playlist and I sing like I was born in Tennessee. It’s not something that I do on a regular basis, but I really enjoy country music whenever I listen to it. And since the only thing I knew about this book is that it was about two young country singers – I didn’t know too much about what the story was about, as usual -, I was automatically interested.

This story is about a very talented, young country singer named Annie Mathers, who is the daughter of two of the most famous country singers ever – and unfortunately they died when she was younger.  She is part of a band with her two best friends – a fiddler and a drummer – and she shares her gift of singing like an angel with small audiences. They have a few fans of their own but most people know Annie for her parents’ legacy. One day, something very unexpected happens. She gets an invitation to be the opening act for the tour concerts of the country superstar Clay Coolidge. He has a bad reputation because of his bad behaviour, and his label company is threatening to drop him if he doesn’t convince her to be part of the tour to make him look better. The band accepts to be part of Clay’s shows, but not everything runs smoothly. There is some tension between the groups, especially between the two singers! So everyone has a very interesting tour across the country…

What I liked so much about this book is the atmosphere created. To me, a good book makes you travel to another place and makes you feel the characters’ experiences and emotions. And I felt like I got that with this book. I felt like I was part of the concerts and it made me feel like I traveled with country singers and saw their lives on a personal level. I have to say that some things were realistic, others not so much, but I was very happy with the end result. All the characters were very likeable and I loved how both groups hung out together and got to know each other. I also really liked the banter between the singers and all the bickering! That made the story even more interesting to me – also, I love enemies-to-lovers stories, so it was a no-brainer for why I liked the romance.

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover. It has the right amount of depth and fun. It’s definitely not a “hollow” book. I wish more people read this because I feel like it’s underrated! If you like country music and YA books, you are in for a treat.

xoxo, Neide

“Fairy godmother says you are limitless. 
you can have the lipstick. 
you can have the sword.” – 5/5 stars!

Attention! This book contains: self-love, self-worth, self-respect, fairy godmother’s advice and broken glass slippers.

It’s official: I found a favorite poetry book.

I am no expert in poetry – obviously – but I think poetry can be very subjective and people can have different interpretations of what they read. And this book for me was like looking at myself in a mirror. It’s amazing how much I identified myself to so many of the poems in this book. I swear I had to stop a few times and think ‘this is crazy, it looks like this was written about me’. 

I had a hard time figuring out what main quote/poem I would choose to put above – like I always do on my reviews – because I had so many perfect options to choose from. I didn’t want to choose only one quote, so below are two of some of my favorite.

“Fairy godmother says i don’t know if anyone has ever told you this, but: 
their lack of love for you does not make you any less loveable.”

“Fairy godmother says keep standing up for yourself. 
don’t let them get used to the idea that their opinions should rule you.  
you, my dear, rule yourself. 
you wear the crown. 
you sit on the throne. 
you—not them. 
make sure they never forget that.”

I’ve read her previous poetry series ‘Women Are Some Kind of Magic’ and I thought overall it was an okay collection, but this one won my heart. I also loved the subtle illustrations that were added to some pages!

In my opinion, this is one of those books you should keep forever. I’m going to treasure my copy because I know I’m going back and reread it a lot. Beautiful words, beautiful work.

xoxo, Neide

“George Orwell was wrong, she thinks. In the future, it won’t be the state that keeps tabs on everyone by extensive use of surveillance; it will be the people. They’ll do the state’s work for it by constantly uploading their locations, interests, food preferences, restaurant choices, political ideas, and hobbies to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sites. We are our own secret police.” – 4/5 stars!

Attention! This book contains: prepaid phones, princess tents, plushies, heroin, guns, breast cancer, new girlfriends, secret notes and very clear instructions.

This was pretty good, I’m impressed!
So if you don’t know what this book is about, it’s about an unbreakable chain of child kidnappings. So when a child is kidnapped, his/her parents are contacted through a prepaid phone and they are given a series of instructions from ‘The Chain’ that they need to accomplish if they want their child to live. After doing the ‘easy’ part, the last step comes: they need to kidnap someone else’s child. This means that the ones who kidnapped the first child are other parents that have their own kid kidnapped by another family. It’s a chain, a never ending cycle where parents are involved in kidnapping another kid to keep theirs alive.
I have to say that the concept was really good and interesting, and probably the main reason why I picked this book up – okay, okay, and the cover too. What shocked me was the fact that this story is actually based on true events. According to the author in the acknowledgements section of the book, the story was inspired by a kidnap chain that happened in Mexico where other family members could give their spot to rescue the family member kidnapped. Not only that, but the concept of threatening chain messages was also applied in this book.
One of the things I really liked about the book was that the story started immediately. You are given no context or backstory, the book starts with the kidnapping of the main character’s daughter. And from there – like I was expecting – it was difficult to put the book down.
All the characters were good and some of them had very interesting backgrounds. The main character Rachel is such a strong female lead! Even though she is suffering with breast cancer, she puts the pain and the appointments aside to do everything she is told to rescue her daughter. I also liked to see how Rachel and her ex husband were so close to each other and were actual friends – maybe I haven’t read enough, but I think this is a rare thing to happen!
Another thing I also appreciate is that the story has an actual conclusion. I thought this would be a book where the ending would be very ambiguous, but it was not the case. So if you don’t like stories without conclusions, you don’t have to worry about this book!
Overall, this was pretty interesting. The story is creative and well told. A very solid four star rating from me!

xoxo, Neide

“To deny humanity the lesson of consequences would be a mistake.
And I do not make mistakes.” – 5/5 stars!

Attention! This book contains: black robes, explosives, old maps, unsavories, floods, decapitated bodies, system failures, diamonds, tonists, blind spots, revivals and of course, the Thunderhead.

OMG this was so good! This is definitely one of the best series I’ve ever read.

Maybe it’s just my opinion but I feel like in most cases sequels don’t have the same quality as the first books. I get that there is a lot of pressure for authors to maintain the quality for the rest of the series and keep the readers interested, especially if the first book was a hit. And unfortunately sometimes sequels are not as good as the first book, but I have to say that this was not a case like that. This book was just as good as the first one!

In this book, we still follow Rowan and Citra and now they face all the consequences of how the first book ended. Rowan becomes Scythe Lucifer, condemning scythes that take pleasure in gleaning and/or abuse their power as scythes. While this happens, Citra defends a different way of gleaning in which she gives people some time to say goodbye to their loved ones. Because of this she became the talk of the scythedom and a lot of scythes don’t agree with her way of gleaning, so now she and Scythe Curie are no longer safe. Not only that happens, but a new storyline is presented with a new character named Grayson. The Thunderhead is very present in this book and we get a better insight of what is like to be the amazing Thunderhead. Of course a lot of things happen after, and the story develops beautifully and with a great pace. There are also a lot of plot twists and crazy stuff happening so I was never bored.

One thing I found very interesting was how in this book we didn’t get the scythes’ journal entries between chapters like we did in the first book, but now we got “thoughts” and the perspective from the Thunderhead about humans, life and scythes. That was a really interesting shift!

Now… I didn’t know if I should talk about this because it’s really not relevant, but I just want to because it actually made me laugh out loud. I can’t even tell you how hard I laughed when I read that there was a junior scythe named Scythe Beyoncé. I could only imagine Tiffany Pollard (a.k.a. New York) saying ‘Scythe Beyoncé? Scythe Beyoncé? SCYTHE BEYONCÉ? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR F****** MIND?!’

I don’t know why I laughed so hard at that because I know it’s not even funny. It just caught me by surprise I guess ahah!

And that ending… oh my God, I don’t have words for that ending. It broke my heart but it was a great transition for the next book, which I’m currently reading. It’s a big cliffhanger – but a very good one. I’m just grateful I started the series after all of the books were released because I don’t know what I would do if I needed to wait for the release of the last book!

I don’t even know what else to say other than this series is amazing. If you didn’t pick it up already, I’m telling you: you’re missing out on some good stuff! I’m really enjoying this series, I recommend this to everyone.

xoxo, Neide

“Principles are nice things. If you can afford them. I like to think I am a principled man, but then, most men do. The fact is, we all have a price, we all have buttons that can press to make us do things that are not entirely honorable. Principles do not pay the mortgage or clear our debts. A principled man is generally a man who has everything he wants or absolutely nothing to lose.” – 4.75/5 stars!

Attention! This book contains: old friends, school teachers, body parts, roommates, stick figures, secret signs, dry leafs, abortions, carousels, murders, car accidents, bycicles, stolen rings, angel wings and a lot of chalk.

I really enjoyed this book! I was thinking about whether I should rate this as a four or a five star book, but I finally decided that I’m rounding up my review up to five stars just because the story was so interesting and it was very difficult to put the book down. With that said, I felt like there were some loose ends in the story that made me consider giving it 4 stars – but I’ll talk about that later.

This story is about a group of friends in 1989 that used drawings made of chalk to leave each other messages. So for example, if one of them wanted to meet in the park, he would draw a specific drawing that meant ‘meet me in the park’ with chalk in places the others would see, and then they would bike to the park and meet him there. It was like a secret that only they would understand and know what it meant. They all used different colours of chalk to know who left the message, but no one drew in white. At one point, some terrible things started to happen and mysterious white chalk stick figure drawings started to appear during these events. No one knew who made those drawings. The story is told in two different timelines, one in the present and another one in 1986. In the present the entire group – now adults – receives a mysterious letter with a chalk stick figure and all the things that were buried in the past come to life again. And that’s all I’m going to say because I truly believe that if you decide to go into this book, you shouldn’t know much about it.

I honestly can’t believe this is a debut novel! It is so well written, the pace is great and there is a very gradual building of the unfolding of the mystery. This book kept me interested the entire time. I was never bored and I was always looking forward to knowing more about what was going on! There were a lot of secrets to unfold and in each chapter you discover something new.

I really liked the group of friends and how different they all were from each other. I never read IT by Stephen King, but I saw the movie and it reminded me a lot of that group. It is also a group of boys and a single girl that are always biking around and spending time together. I liked how mysterious some of the characters were and that also contributed to my interest.

The only down point for me – if I can call it that – was how there were some loose ends that I wish the author would address. I’m not going into too much detail because I don’t want to spoil the book for those who didn’t read it yet, but there were a couple of moments that didn’t get an explanation. I personally didn’t get the drawing of the dog and the ones at the church. The second one I think I can imagine what happened, but the first one got me confused… If you already read the book, you know exactly what I mean, and if you understood how that happened, please let me know!

Overall I have to say that I really enjoyed this book and it was really difficult to put it down. It took me a longer time to finish it because I had a very busy week, but if I could, I would have started and finished the book on the same day. Like I said before, I would definitely recommend you to not know much about the book before going into it! 

I recommend this if you like creepy stories or if you are a Stephen King fan.

xoxo, Neide